A former Pennsylvania nurse convicted of killing two patients with lethal amounts of insulin now faces further murder charges and has confessed to attempting to kill 19 more people in multiple locations, authorities said Thursday. Heather Pressdee, 41, revealed to investigators in May that she planned to kill three patients in her care with insulin injections, leading to her arrest on two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.
Heather Pressdee admitted to attempting to kill 19 other patients with insulin
According to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, Ms. Pressdee admitted to attempting to kill 19 other patients with insulin at five separate rehabilitation institutions across the state as recently as this year. According to the authorities, 17 individuals died while under Ms. Pressdee’s care. Two new counts of murder, 17 counts of attempted murder, and 19 counts of neglecting a care-dependent person were announced on Thursday. Pressdee was arraigned on Thursday, but her plea was not disclosed. A message left with her lawyer, Phillip P. DiLucente, was not returned immediately.
“The allegations against Ms. Pressdee are disturbing,” Michelle Henry, the state attorney general, said in a news release. “It is hard to comprehend how a nurse, trusted to care for her patients, could choose to deliberately and systematically harm them.” According to the attorney general’s office, first-degree murder charges were filed against Ms. Pressdee only in cases where “physical evidence” was available. The 17 attempted murder charges were filed in cases where “the victims either survived the excessive dosage of insulin or the cause of death could not be determined.”
According to the lawsuit, other staff members began referring to her as the “Killer Nurse”
She is accused of mistreating 22 patients, ranging in age from 43 to 104 years. Marianne Bower, 68, died in September 2021 while under Pressdee’s care at Belair Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Lower Burrell. Family members thought Bower died of respiratory failure for two years. According to Rob Peirce, a lawyer representing Bower’s estate in a separate wrongful-death lawsuit against the rehabilitation center, investigators informed them in September that Pressdee had acknowledged killing Ms. Bower, who was not diabetic, with insulin.
“This is one of the worst cases we have seen with someone in the health care system going from facility to facility and, unfortunately, admitting to killing multiple people,” Mr. Peirce said in a phone interview. Bower’s family wants to know how Pressdee managed to work at 11 rehabilitation facilities over five years since 2018, Peirce said.
Belair Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment. According to the lawsuit, staff members at the center began to notice that Pressdee was exhibiting “troubling behavior” and that the health of patients in her care would “unexpectedly deteriorate.”
According to the lawsuit, other staff members began referring to her as the Killer Nurse. According to the lawsuit, the Health Department of Pennsylvania investigated the center the same year after seeing a trend in which residents displayed indicators of acute diabetes problems. Pressdee admitted to Health Department investigators that she had not called the facility physician to attend to one of these patients, which was against the center’s rules. The Health Department cited the rehabilitation center in August 2021, claiming that its residents were in “immediate jeopardy,” according to the lawsuit.